Belgians like to take a lot of breaks at home. Thanks to digital TV, for example, they pause the live, recorded or on demand content on their screen whenever they want and start watching it again whenever they want. All they have to do is press the pause button on their remote and their TV show freezes. On this exact moment, we wanted viewers to see amusing Royco ads instead of a boring frozen image of the content they're watching. But the technology to do this didn’t excist yet. So we decided to create it ourselves and together with the SBS Broadcasting Group we transformed the ""freeze-screen"" into a whole new ad medium. Every time a viewer pressed the pause button on his/her remote, one of Royco’s funny pause ads appeared celebrating the viewer's break.

Normally, when Belgian tv viewers pause their live, recorded or on demand content, they get to see a frozen image of that content provided with a big pause icon in the middle. Thanks to the Royco Breakvertising system the technicians of the SBS broadcasting group built for us, every Belgian viewer now got to see a fullscreen Royco ad, supporting them in taking a break. In the beginning of november 2015, we tested the first stage, where we applied the Breakvertising ads to 100.000 digiboxes in Belgium. After the first positive results, we launched it nationwide. Using captured data of the show viewed and the viewers themselves ads can now even be targeted.

The Breakvertising technology started as a necessary tool to bring our “Royco break Screens” idea to life on TV. But it resulted in a nationwide debate around the necessity of innovative and personalized advertising on TV, adapted to the viewer’s behavior.

This made other brands and broadcasters interested as well. As a result, the SBS Broadcasting Group decided to put “Breakvertising” in commercial business model as an official new ad medium on TV. Next to important snack brands as M&M’s, Pizza Hut and Danone, Breakvertising also attracts car brands, Tour operators, dating apps etc... In a further stage, the Liberty Global Group (Global head office of the SBS Broadcasting Group Belgium) investigates whether they can roll out the technology internationally as well. The project’s investors are Royco itself, the SBS Broadcasting Group and our own agency.

Digital TV brought drastic change in what, when and how we watch TV. But the classic advertising model on TV remained the same.

With Breakvertising we redefined the role of advertising in people’s more personalized lives. The campaign changed tv advertising for good going from interuptive commercial breaks to relevant and “consumer-triggered” communication on TV.

Almost all brands have a specific brand universe, but few of them are capable of translating that universe into a specific medium in a relevant way. Our innovation has now even evolved to a relevant and non-intrusive commercial platform.

The last years, on demand viewing caused a major shift in how Belgians watch TV but it didn’t really have the same effect on how Belgian brands use digital TV to communicate to viewers. Despite it being an ever-evolving and smart technological device, digiboxes and their potential are not yet challenged by our marketeers or advertisers, as most of them are still traditional thinkers when it comes to TV. Even when commercials no longer have an insured amount of viewing rates. New players like Netflix as well as replay & ad skipping features created a television landscape in which we ourselves as viewers decide when and why we take a break from our content. Not longer controlled or directed by commercial breaks and the brands that bring them to you. But instead of seeing this as a restriction, we took it as a starting point.